(Part 1 of 2)

When they're testing a new story idea, Adam Moore and writing partner Kevin Abrams first ask how many forms of media can the idea take. Can it become a movie, a TV program (live-action or animated), a video game and/or a comic book? They're looking for ideas that fit at least three forms. If you're thinking this doesn't apply to you because you just want to write for the movies or television, Moore will give you plenty to consider. As Hollywood studios churn out bigger but fewer movies, we're seeing more big-budget, four-quadrant tentpoles that open with tied-in video games, music, toys, clothing and more on their way to retailers when the movie is released. According to Moore, it's no longer enough to be a screenwriter. He and Abrams are currently developing motion picture, animated television and video game elements of a new intellectual property (IP) for game-developer Digital Embryo.

With this omnimedia concept in mind, Moore and Abrams founded Fairtrade films, an IP and content creation company. Their graphic novel, "Vendor," was published by Viper comics in 2008 and is now being developed as a videogame; their feature script, "The Pinkertons" is being packaged by William Morris Endeavor Entertainment (WME Entertainment); and they developed an interactive multi-touch game for IBM's presence at Walt Disney World. Their company also produces commercials, public service announcements and non-scripted television series.

Moore also teaches Business of Screenwriting for the New York Film Academy at Universal Studios, Los Angeles. The Academy recently tapped him to develop a video game design program. Slated to open this fall, the two-year curriculum promises uniqueness to similar programs in other schools due to its emphasis on story integrated with game development.

In part one of this two-part interview, Moore discusses how he broke into the entertainment industry and what it means to be a writer working in an omnimedia landscape.

Q: How did you become a writer in Hollywood's omnimedia landscape?

A: I went to NYU for my undergrad for the Dramatic Writing program and then bummed around New York for a bit. I got an agent and sat back and thought the writing gigs would just come to me and they didn't, because that's not how it works. Eventually, about seven years after I came to New York for the first time, I came out to AFI for grad school. I studied screenwriting at AFI for two years.

When I graduated was when the idea of being an omnimedia writer first came into my world, because I needed to find a job. I knew from my time in New York that I'm not a good assistant. I don't enjoy answering phones and I don't always enjoy being told what to do. I'm not good at making coffee, so Starbucks was out. I didn't know what I was going to do for a living. The only thing I knew I was good at was writing, so I had to figure out how, really quickly, to make money writing while I was waiting for my spec to sell. At the time that I'd graduated AFI, I had no representation, I had just started working with a writing partner and we were just getting going, and that spec that I assumed was going to sell, well it didn't.

Knowing that all I am good at is writing, I started to look for what I could do that pays writing-wise. Around New York, I'd become a full-time coverage reader for a couple production companies in town. So, one form of writing was writing coverage. Also, when I was in New York, I worked for the Creative Advertising department at Dimension Films. That is the side of the company where they write and produce the trailers for their movies. I did a little copywriting, so there was another form of writing that was paying the bills. Then I got interested in comic books. There's another form of writing, and I like comic books, so I looked into writing for comics and had a graphic novel published in 2008. Kids animation (not like "Simpsons" or "Family Guy" because those are covered by the Guild, but stuff you see on Cartoon Network or like the "Spiderman" cartoon or the "Batman" cartoon show) -- I started looking into that -- networking, meeting people, writing specs and trying to get jobs in TV animation. And then video games as well. A good friend of mine from high school was smart and instead of studying writing he studied an actual payable skill like computer engineering and he became a programmer at a game developer out here in L.A. He called me one day and said, "Hey, they're looking to hire a screenwriter to write their new game," and I said, "Well, I'm a screenwriter."

It became a pattern of investigation and never saying "no" to any gig that came my way. I learned on the job what it means to be an omnimedia writer, which turned out to be convenient because the industry was heading in the same direction that I was heading when I graduated AFI back in 2005. The industry was already all about IP (intellectual property), which means, when a movie comes out, there better be a video game; there better be a comic book, a breakfast cereal, pajamas and the whole thing.

I learned on the job how to write comic books, animation, video games, and was already a feature and TV writer. That's why I teach the Business of Screenwriting. The idea behind that class is [to teach] everything you don't learn in workshops, everything I never learned in film school. There's pitching, writing coverage and writing loglines. A big part of it is about what you do when you graduate. How do you prepare yourself for the new omnimedia universe? It's no longer enough for you to just be a screenwriter. It's like, "Okay, you're a screenwriter. Well, what else do you have?" From March to the end of August, look at the movies that come out. They're giant tentpoles that have a dozen different offshoots into kids animation, the video game world. My partner and I, when we approach writing, actually look at our idea and ask, "Can it live in at least three different forms of media?" And if it can't, it may be a great idea, but we table it until we find that next form.

You start with the concepts and then go from there. Pitching is fifty percent of the job. If I'm not writing and I'm not teaching, then I'm in someone's office, meeting with people. A big part of the screenwriter's job, and it's not taught a lot in schools, is meeting people. There's a real art to meeting people and pitching ideas. I know many writers who are fantastic writers, but have no careers, because they can't pitch. I know a ton of writers who are mediocre, but have a great career because they're awesome in the room. It's an undertaught art.

Q: When you develop video game, animated television and motion picture elements for one intellectual property, what do you deliver?

A: The first thing that happens is a high-level design document. It's about five pages, sometimes ten. It sets up all the pieces of the intellectual property. Let's say we're coming up with the idea for "Batman" and it's brand new. What you would do is talk about the project, talk about the franchise. You'd start with Bruce Wayne flashbacks. He's a billionaire at Wayne enterprises. You'd talk about his alter-ego, Batman -- he has a cape. He wears a cowl that has little bat ears on top of it. He drives around in a car called the Batmobile. You're setting up the world. It's a city called Gotham City. What are the elements of the world? Talk about dark, film noir overtones, sort of sin city-esque. Talk about the world of the villains and flesh out that world.

What my partner and I love to do more than anything is create worlds. We come up with the world first. What would be a cool world to tell stories in? Not just this story, but any story. We set up characters. We may talk about potential stories, but usually that's too refined for a high-level document.

A good exercise for your readers would be to take their favorite franchise like "Transformers" or "Superman" or whatever, and take story out of it. Just write down, in four or five pages, all the franchise elements. What makes Batman "Batman"? What are all those iconic things you remember that have nothing to do with story? Character backstory, like the fact that his parents were killed is what turned him into Batman, would also be part of that high-level document. It's a really cool exercise that I have my students do -- deconstruct a franchise and look for, what we call in pitching, the franchise elements.

Once you have that document, you can see what you can do with it. We already know Batman is a crime-fighter. That would work for a video game, right? And there are these cool super-villains, so at the end of each level, he could have a battle with one of the super-villains, probably leading up to the big boss at the end of the game, which would be the one we call the Joker. It could also be a TV series pretty easily because it's episodic. It could be animated or live-action. You've got a case to solve, because Batman is a detective, so it's a procedural. And it's a movie. So, you can see how all these ideas can be extrapolated just from that one high-level document, where you talk about the franchise elements of it. And that's something studios are looking for today in terms of what they're buying.

The [studios] want to see that it's more than just a movie. I love movies like "Juno" and "Little Miss Sunshine," but they're not tentpole franchises. What's a "Juno" video game? Maybe it could be a TV show. I guess in this landscape there's probably an argument that maybe you could actually create a great comic book based on the underserved female market.

Once you have that high-level document, then it depends on who you are working with. If we're working with a producer, then from that high-level document, we start to generate a treatment for the movie, or the TV series if we're working with a TV producer. If we're working with a video game company, then we generate what's called the game design document, which is a 30 to 40-page document that's a vision document for the entire game. We lay out the entire story of the game, the gameplay, what makes it unique from other games, how you actually play it ... all the way down to what game engine you think would be best. (The game is driven by a piece of software called an engine.)

It all comes from the concept and you can just spin it out in all these different directions. If you have an idea and it can't be spun out in all these different directions, that doesn't mean it's a bad idea. It just means that maybe it's not the best one for an omnimedia landscape unless you can find a way to tweak it a little bit. Is there a way that "Little Miss Sunshine" could be a video game? It's got the goal. You have to start somewhere and you get somewhere. I suppose there is a way you could spin it.

Q: Is episodic material more suitable for a video game than a movie?

A: A movie is two hours (and if you're James Cameron, it's two and a half and if you're Peter Jackson, it's four hours). Top video game titles today are like eighteen hours. Writing a video game is like sitting down and writing the entire season of a TV series in one shot. There is going to be a more episodic feel to it. Back in the days of Mario Brothers, there was level one-one, level one-two, level one-three ... . As game players, we're hardwired to play levels. We talk about it in terms of levels instead of episodes, but it's all the same thing.

What about a game like "Grand Theft Auto"? It's called an open world game because you can play for an infinite number of hours and never really interact with the game story at all. You can go around stealing cars, buying guns, shooting people, picking up the occasional prostitute. You can do whatever you want and never really advance the story or you can create your own story. Is that episodic? Or is it something else? You can steal a taxi cab and spend the whole game picking up people and dropping them off at destinations. You can steal an ambulance and spend the whole game driving around and picking up the wounded and bringing them to the hospital. You can make the game what you want. Video games are interactive and it's about giving the players as many choices or the appearance of as many choices as possible. A world game isn't really episodic. "Grand Theft Auto" has missions. You go to some gangster and he says you have to bring this money to this person and kill anyone that tries to stop you, and now you're in an episode; but otherwise, you're just rolling around. To an extent, games are episodic, but as games get more complex and as players get trained to realize you can do whatever you want in a game, they start to demand games that will let them do whatever they want.

Q: What prompted Fairtrade Films?

A: My business partner's name is Kevin Abrams. Kevin and I met at AFI. He was in the directing program and I was in the writing program. We became fast friends because we speak the same story language and were interested in the same things. We grew up loving films like the art house films from the 1970s; also films like "Raiders of the Lost Arc," "Jaws" and "Star Wars"-big popcorn movies. I'd start a sentence and he'd finish it story-wise. We just speak the same language. His family founded Mego toys. Back in the seventies, they did the first "Star Trek" toys. They're the company that invented action figures. He comes from that world where, when you create an idea, it's for toys, TV shows-it's everything.

It's hard to categorize us as a film production company because we're everything. We should probably call ourselves Fairtrade Omnimedia, but we like the alliteration of Fairtrade Films. The idea behind it is IP generation-create that high-level concept.

With our comic book idea, we had that five-page document talking about the world. It's a post-apocalyptic world where a flesh-eating virus that attacks your limbs has killed half the world. Adding to that world is the fact that when you get an attack on a limb, you have to chop off that limb so you don't die, because it'll seep into your blood stream and you'll die after two hours if you don't amputate. So, there is a market for body parts. Enter the main character, John J. Vendor. He's the guy you can call up and no questions asked will get the replacement body part you need, regardless of size, gender or race. Then extrapolate from that world a little bit more. There aren't enough human limbs around, so people start adapting animal parts. Maybe you have horse legs for your legs; or a lion's leg and claw for your arm. Those are the franchise elements of our comic book. We've added other characters into it. There's a guy called Arm And Hammer, who has a boa constrictor for an arm. He's part of a carnival side show.

So, we create this high-level document. And then we sit down and say, "What is the best way to get this idea set up? Is it a comic book?" For "Vendor," the comic book was the right way to go. For other ideas, the screenplay is the best way to go. The idea is to not prejudge something; to be open to any form of media that comes our way. We go on a lot of pitch meetings. As far as Hollywood knows, Kevin Abrams and Adam Moore are a screenwriting team. We're doing a big pitch right now for a large piece of IP, which if everything goes well, you'll see in Variety.

For our spec projects, we start from that [high-level] viewpoint and decide which is the best way to go. We never close doors. We never say, "No, it can't be done." We leave every single door open. We go out to companies where we see a fit. It means that we actually bring a lot more because we're not stuck in the feature screenwriting world. We're able to bring in a lot more revenue from a lot of different sources. Going back to the beginning, it started out as a survival thing, "Okay, this spec that I wrote didn't sell. Good thing I am writing a video game right now. Good thing I got a script to write for a kids TV animation show." That survival technique turned into an actual business philosophy for Fairtrade Films.

My partner is first and foremost a director. He's a fantastic writer and a great writing partner, but he's a director. Our idea is to continue to pursue these omnimedia projects, while at the same time producing our own films. Earlier I mentioned those projects that we have that are not necessarily omnimedia. Those go into the "Let's raise money and produce this film" [category]. For a company that prides itself on having two employees, it tends to be a lot. We're always working about a dozen projects at the same time.

Q: How do you write together as a team?

A: Writing teams have different styles. I know writers who work in the same room together. They plug their computer into the TV and massage every single word together, which I think works for writers like that. For us, it's the complete opposite. We meet in our office at least once a week. Most of the time, when we're together, we're breaking those high-level concepts down like, "Hey, I've got a high-level idea about this," and we'll bat it back and forth. Or, if we're outlining an idea, we'll get together and do that, but really, we tend take different elements of the world. I definitely head up a lot of the video game stuff. We do a lot of work in the non-scripted world like reality TV and Kevin heads up a lot of that. He has a ton of experience in documentary and also in editing for reality TV. We sort of break up our territory. It sets us free to pursue projects for the company without having both of us having to focus on it at all times.

I'll use our spec script "The Pinkertons" as an example. Kevin had the idea and this was about five years ago. When we made the decision to write it as a movie, we got together and wrote the outline. Then I went off and wrote the first draft. That draft went to Kevin and he did his draft. And then we got together and looked at the combined drafts. Then we said, "Hey, you did a good job here, did a good job here, this is the worst thing I ever read and you're an idiot" -- that sort of back and forth.

You cannot take things personally in a team because you're always working for the same goal. There are times when we argue about things. When we were first partners, we took it personally. Kevin said, "I really don't like this scene" and I'd be like, "Well, screw you, man ..." (laughing) "... You're an ass, you don't understand me." After a while, you work out the kinks and realize you're working on the same project. He's not a producer giving you notes. He's your partner trying to help you make it as good as possible. Arguing about the idea is really a healthy part of it because whoever backs down first is the one that has the weaker idea. This happens with just about every argument we have -- one of us will say, "Fuck you, you're right." You actually get worn down and it may seem like an exhaustive process, but the best idea wins. We like it that way, but because we have that type of relationship, I don't think it would work for us if we were writing in the same room together, because we'd argue over every line of dialogue and two years later, we'd still be halfway through the script.

We also have different work methods. When I chose Kevin to be a partner, one reason was because we see story eye-to-eye, but also I sought out a person that has strengths that I don't have. I am the writer. I want to be in my room, in my office, behind my computer writing twelve hours a day and it's fine if I never see anyone. Kevin is the exact opposite of that. He's the director. He likes to be out there, he likes to meet people, he likes to go to Hollywood parties, he likes to network with people and he's great at it. That's a huge part of what has made our career successful so far. He meets so many people that can help bring jobs in and things like that. It's so necessary as a writer. You've heard it so many times -- network -- and it's true. And I don't like to network.

Q: You compliment each other.

A: Exactly. And when we first started out, I didn't like pitching. I don't love pitching now. I like being in the room when you get that pitch meeting with people that make decisions like the VP or the president of production or the producer. I get a little charge out of that, but it's not my favorite thing to do. Again, he's great at that.

I want to be focused, with my headphones on, writing. He wants to pull out his guitar, play a few tunes and think about an idea. So, we have completely different creative processes. In terms of writing, he is fantastic with character subtleties -- the subtle shades that make characters feel real and he's really good with action set pieces. I'm structure guy.

It cannot be stated enough that structure is so important in Hollywood. The first thing that my manager said to me was, "You are so good at structure." I'm structure guy and I'm good at dialogue as well, so put us together and we form one great writer.

Q: That's all you need.

Next month, in part two of this interview, Moore discusses what a writer needs to know to be prepared for the omnimedia landscape. The New York Film Academy Game Design Program is slated to launch in Los Angeles and New York this fall. For more information, see the Web site (www.nyfa.com/game-design-school).